Japanese adult video actresses provide stiff…drinks at new bar opening in Tokyo’s Akihabara

Actresses and employees from Japan’s most prominent adult film distributor staff bar where customers won’t mind the lack of seats.

If you’re craving an alcoholic beverage in Japan, there are a number of business classes ready to satisfy that desire, including izakaya pubs and even fast food restaurants such as Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then there’s the category of bars known as tachinomiya.

“Tachinomi” literally means “stand and drink,” (with ya meaning “bar” in this case), because the defining characteristic of a tachinomiya is that there aren’t any chairs to sit on. The required feat of remaining on your feet continuously while you consume round after round of beer, cocktails, or sake makes tachinomiya a love-it-or-hate-it aspect of Japan’s drinking culture, but a new standing bar opening up in Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood offers something that many would say is even better than furniture: adult film actresses.

Next month, Soft on Demand will be opening the Soft on Demand Tachinomi, conveniently located right next to Akihabara Station, as shown in the bar’s tweeted video announcement. On weekends, adult video actresses who appear in Soft on Demand productions will periodically be on-site as honorary “managers of the day.”

▼ The cross-shaped Akihabara Station is seen in the center of the map, with the site of the Soft on Demand bar represented by the pink box.

However, the announcement tweet says that the bar will also be open on Thursdays and Fridays, and on those days it’ll be staffed by Soft on Demand’s female employees. In other words, customers’ drinks will be served by women who work in the pornography industry, but in a fully clothed business-role capacity.

It seems like Soft on Demand’s more famous, on-camera representatives, such as the above Makoto Toda, would be the larger draw, but the company’s experiment in hybrid adult video-related marketing starts when the Soft on Demand Tachinomi opens on March 3.